Wildfire threatens mountain town

A wind-whipped out-of-control wildfire threatened to encroach a mountain town in California's Lake Tahoe area on Wednesday, prompting road and campsite closures as fires blackened swathes of four states along the drought-stricken U.S. West Coast.

Hundreds of firefighters backed by water-dropped aircraft were toiling to keep the 16,543-acre (6,695-hectare) blaze from Markleeville, an area with about 250 residences south of Lake Tahoe about three miles (4.8 km) from the fire's leading edge, as officials closed highways and campgrounds.

Although the fire has not progressed materially in the previous two days, residents were told to prepare for evacuation. One firefighter was injured due to heat.

"Vegetation is feeling the stress from over three years' cumulative drought and historically low snowpack in the mountains this past winter," according to fire-tracking website InciWeb, which pulls information from multiple agencies.

To the south, in the mountains east of Los Angeles, firefighters have expanded containment lines by 10 percent to 38 percent around an 18,875 acre-blaze (7,638-hectare) that erupted earlier this month, and slowed its growth, fire officials said.

Scores of additional wildfires were raging across parched areas up and down the U.S. West Coast, which is grappling with drought emergencies and record low snowpack.

In Alaska, blazes near the northeast Alaska communities of Nulato and Tanana along the Yukon River prompted authorities to call for evacuations of several hundred people, officials said on Tuesday.

Another blaze of more than 18,000 acres (7,300 hectares) farther upriver threatened a major roadway linking Anchorage and Fairbanks.

In Oregon, a fire in Cave Junction grew by about 300 acres from Tuesday to 5,340 acres but was about 50 percent contained.

Fire officials have enacted restrictions on using open fires and flammables in 16 counties as Governor Kate Brown declared a drought emergency for 20 of the state's 36 counties.

In Washington state, a wildfire that has burned nearly 800 acres in the Olympic Peninsula was being propelled through steep terrain by dry lichens in the old-growth rainforest canopy, a fire official said on Tuesday.